1. Both Orson and H.G. debunk the interviewer's notion that there was an actual widespread panic following Orson's War of the Worlds broadcast. Politely but firmly they are saying that the media made it up.

2. The broadcast is coming from San Antonio where H.G. has just given a speech to a brewers association. That in itself is interesting.

3. The war overhangs all. Both Orson and H.G. are low key but emphatic in their emphasis of this. Overall they are not bombastic on any subject.

4. H.G. gives Orson a big opportunity to plug Citizen Kane, which is completed but not yet released.

"The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the... word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?" H.G. Wells

As a radio guy myself, I just have to love the singular genius that is the original WOTW radio presentation. Everything, from the voice work to the sound effects, is just note-perfect, even given the time and the tools they had to work with.

One thing that keeps coming up in my reading of the genesis of the modern progressive movement is how enamored they all were with Russia and, indeed, both Germany and Italy...especially Italy. WWII was a rude awakening for them, unfortunately for the "cause".

One wonders how many people that died under communism would have lived had Patton gotten his request for fuel and tanks in 1945.

According to Jonah Goldberg, H.G. Wells coined the term "Liberal Fascism."

Wiki: In the book, Goldberg argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, fascist movements were and are left-wing. He states that both modern liberalism and fascism descended from progressivism, and that prior to World War II, "fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States".

Goldberg has told interviewers that the title Liberal Fascism comes "directly from a speech that H.G. Wells gave to the Young Liberals at Oxford in 1932." Goldberg claims that Wells had stated that he wanted to "assist in a kind of phoenix rebirth" of liberalism as an "enlightened Nazism."

Goldberg writes that there was more to fascism than bigotry and genocide and, in fact, that bigotry and genocide were not so much a feature of fascism itself, but rather a feature of Nazism, which was forced upon the Italian fascists "after the Nazis had invaded northern Italy and created a puppet government in Salò."

May explain why in the audio H.G. Wells started to chafe when Orson Welles mentioned Hitler's Munich speech.

Thinkers always want the best thinker to take over and rule the world.The ease with which Thinkers can get one Great, screwed up, Idea and refuse to compromise has been their achilles heel.Marxists are all thinkers who would rather die than admit how awfully horrible their Great Idea has been yesterday, is now, and will be forever. And being granted tenure at Harvard does not cure them, it only makes them even more powerful insane people

Quite so, Crack.The same progressives were embracing spiritualism at the turn of the 19th century, talking to the dead, photographing tiny garden fairies, rejecting traditional mores for bohemianism (on poppa's dime), and seeing the world as composed of clueless masses needing direction and tough leadership by the enlightened elite.

Crack...What does your name Crack come from? Are you a cracker jack? Or a nut cracker? Or a Georgia cracker? or a lover of Ritz crackers? Or a reader of Cracked Magazine? Or a seer thru a lens that was once cracked, but now is fixed? And we do thank you.

American progressives of that era have a lot in common with the progressives of today. The problems are the stuff they were also in favor of that nobody on the left seems to want to talk about. Eugenics comes to mind and its relationship with minimum wage, planned parenthood, etc.

To a hammer, all problems are nails. It is interesting to learn that Hitler considered our gullibility re Welles' broadcast a symptom of decadence. Myself, I would consider going around in black leather lederhosen a bit fey......The belief in spiritualism was not decadent but pathetic. Arthur Conan Doyle's son and wife had both gone to early graves. His sense of painful loss was shared by many after the Great War. Hence the desperate wish to make contact with the vivid dead. There was a similar uptick in spiritualism in America after the Civil War......The political insights of just about everybody in the thirties now look very foolish. But please remember that most of our insight into their fatuity is hindsight. Eighty years from now many of our most cherished beliefs will look very silly and harmful

Scott M... I am not getting your point. But no, I never defend any version of the Blood and Soil nazi doctrines, no matter how nuanced. The death panels are a whiff of nazi teachings. The essence of a nazi is an easy willingness to find a noble purpose in killing other people so you can take their stuff. It is a basic factor in the appeal of Communism, and of environmentalism. Since their preferred conduct is traditionally illegal, they are always announcing the need to be above the law, or find that law does not apply when the will to power is spiritually flowing thru them. My first encounter with a neo version of nazis thought was the John Birch Society. My advice is to confront the SOBs and ask questions later. I doubt that the pride factor involved in the cult allows these men to ever get free from their addiction to it just because you show them respect.